No one named Jaromir Jagr, Jarome Iginla, Brenden Morrow, Marian Gaborik or Jason Pominville will be joining the young Oilers on their four-game road trip as they continue to battle for a playoff berth in the Western Conference.

Nor were there any picks — first-, second-, third-round, or any round, for that matter. There were no goodies to store in the cupboard until the NHL entry draft.

There was only Jerred Smithson, a 34-year-old centre with some size (six-foot-three, 209 pounds), good faceoff skills and a physical edge to his game who will add necessary depth to the Oilers bottom six forward corps.

But ‘only’ Smithson will do for now. It’s a smart, sensible move by Tambellini.

The Oilers don’t need to shop for skill, at all, let alone overpay for it at the trade deadline. They’re loaded with skill, homegrown at that. It’s complementary talent, role players they need. They added one such player in Smithson. They had hoped to add more.

Tambellini did say he had been “into some significant discussions” — the Oilers were said to be among the teams pitching for giant-sized goalie Ben Bishop, who was traded from Ottawa to Tampa Bay. No other deal was made. nor would the GM speak about the ones that got away.

Basically, Tambellini lost out in the Bishop sweepstakes, having reportedly offered Ryan Jones and a second-round draft pick. Ottawa GM Bryan Murray opted for young forward Cory Conacher and a fourth-round pick. Win some, lose some.

“Yes, there were a lot of different scenarios where I could have moved people for mid-round picks, maybe a little higher in a couple of other circumstances,” Tambellini said. “But that wasn’t my goal coming into this trade deadline.

“It was to find some way to not take away from the depth of our dressing room, or the people that we’ve asked to compete so hard to get to this spot, was to show them that we trust this group, that they have a wonderful opportunity to get in the playoffs here.”

The player he landed, giving up a fourth-round draft pick to the Florida Panthers to do so, seems a mighty useful piece on a team so strapped at centre, mostly owing to injury, that head coach Ralph Krueger has had to deploy winger Ryan Smyth at that position. Now Smyth can slide back over to left wing and go about the business of banging along the boards, in the corners and in front of the net.

“Where we need help is on faceoffs,” Tambellini said. “There are going to be critical situations down the stretch here (where) it’s going to be so important, whether it’s a power play, a penalty kill, whatever it is, the more you can retain the puck for your hockey club, the better.”

With Smithson, who was winning faceoffs at a 54.8 per cent clip in Florida, Shawn Horcoff, and Eric Belanger, when he recovers from a sore groin, will have depth at that position on their third and fourth lines.

Neither Ryan Nugent-Hopkins nor Sam Gagner, gifted offensive performers both, is an adept faceoff man, so Tambellini has shored up a weak spot on the club’s roster at crunch time.

He was not prepared to pay the price in young talent or key performers on the current roster, even if, as with Ryan Whitney, Ryan Jones, Mark Fistric and others, they are on expiring contracts.

On Whitney, Tambellini said: “Two things. One, the fact that he’s playing well. And, two, his ability to move the puck is something that we desperately need.

“We have skilled forwards that demand the puck at the right time to take advantage of transition they can deliver. I didn’t see anywhere in the day today where I thought I could replace that puck-moving (defence).”

So, Tambellini kept Whitney, an unrestricted free agent in July, having concluded the risk of losing him is less costly than the risk of damaging his team’s chances of competing for a playoff spot.

He will deal with trying to sign the club’s free agents “in the right amount of time,” Tambellini said, preferring to focus on the playoff race.

“We’re going to be tested, very, very hard (down the stretch),” Tambellini said. “I know (Oilers players) are excited about that and the last thing I wanted to do was take away something where they thought that maybe they didn’t have as good a chance to win as did the day before.”

Obviously, if the Oilers qualify for the post-season, losing UFAs like Whitney, Jones and others might be more palatable to the demanding fan base than if they don’t.

In Whitney’s case, losing him for nothing would be a particularly dismal end to a cycle of trades that began when the club sent Jarret Stoll and Matt Greene to the Los Angeles Kings for Lubomir Visnovsky in June 2008. In March 2010, Visnovsky went back to California, to Anaheim this time, for Whitney and a draft pick.

Whitney could be deadheading out of Edmonton this summer, obviously.

But that outcome is for another day. Wednesday night there was a game to try to win in Calgary, a much-needed victory that would propel Edmonton into eighth place in the West.

The playoff race is on and it could be quite a ride, and Tambellini was right not to mess with his upbeat roster now. He will deal with the post-season mess in due time.